DISPLAYING ITEMS BY TAG: VIDEO

Keeping aware of the most up-to-date educational technology, and challenging your pupils to use these resources, can become a big task. However by collaborating with other professionals and using their skills as well it becomes much less daunting.

We all know our most inspiring teachers from school; they’re the ones that believed in you. They got you to where you are today, and that’s the quality you should compare to. So why does it have to be so hard finding the right teacher?

Creating video projects and resources allows for a lot of creativity, which is why one east London school has chosen to fully adopt a new system into their school: TrilbyTV.

Beam County Primary School in Dagenham have been using a video creation and storage system to innovate their school in big ways. ICT coordinator John Filer (pictured above) and his colleagues have introduced TrilbyTV into the school, in order to enhance the quality of various literacy, numeracy and science projects, as well as to create fun pupil roles within the building, such as lunchtime monitors. As a result of embracing this new system, the school has seen a huge rise in pupil-engagement, which has had an impact on all areas of the curriculum.

Video can be a powerful instrument for learning, but how to make the most of it? Video innovators Trilby have the ideal system for sharing movies from classroom to classroom.

A South Shields school has adopted an innovative teaching aid in order to inspire its pupils. Stanhope Primary School, who houses up to 210 pupils, has chosen to innovate its school with video-sharing app and online storage service TrilbyTV.

Whatever a person’s profession, self-reflection is an important part of making sure you’re doing the best with your work-hours. Teachers, of course, are developing the minds of the future, so it’s important that they can really examine the pros and cons of their work ethic. Adam Lewis, English teacher at Cramlington Learning Village, Northumberland, very much recommends recording yourself in the classroom.

We’ve all been observed whilst teaching, whether it’s by mentors, mentees, colleagues, SMT or even the dreaded OFSTED. We’re given feedback and we try and implement changes to improve our teaching. However, it is often difficult to remember which part of the lesson the observer is referring to, or which student in particular is being criticised for not being focused enough.

Videoing yourself teaching can change all that. Either by setting up a camera at the back of the classroom, asking a colleague to film it for you or investing in more professional hardware designed for schools, you can transform the way you approach professional development.

Schools like Yew Tree Primary in Sandwell are at the forefront of education innovation - this school in particular loves to create videos. However, it was only when headteacher Howard Martin and his colleagues decided to adopt TrilbyTV that the medium was fully-realised in Yew Tree, with students and teachers able to broadcast their films anywhere on-site.

Yew Tree Primary School in Sandwell, West Midlands have undertaken a new technology initiative powered by edtech specialist Trilby’s new product. The Apple Regional Training Centre, who are keen on all KS2 pupils having their own iPads for learning, have begun using TrilbyTV, a simple-to-use video sharing app and online storage service that allows students to share video projects with each other and around their school. This development is part of a collaboration going back several years, with Trilby having catered for many of the school’s technological needs.

For the past few years, the school has been looking for a solution to use, share and securely store the videos staff and pupils have created. Yew Tree have dabbled with videos in the past, but have lacked the proper infrastructure to show the movies as-and-when they were needed. The use of TrilbyTV, however, gives the school the ability to show pupil-made recordings at any location within the school with the minimum of planning. Within the first few weeks of using the product, the children have already produced over fifty videos within the school.

I have been fortunate to get my hands on a Google Chromecast over the Christmas period and have been exploring what the potential of this device could be for use in the classroom.

Google Chromecast is Google’s attempt to make it easier to bring web video to your TV via the use of their dongle. This plugs into an HDMI port on your telly and projector and allows you to send videos, music and other files to it via Andriod and iOS devices using Chrome browser on you computer. There are a limited amount of apps that take advantage of the Chromecast - YouTube, Netflix, Google Music, to name a few - however, this list is increasing. The function that I am quite excited about is the ability to stream an open tab in the Chrome browser and the potential for this. I will explain more about this later but first I am going to look at how to setup the Chromecast and then how it can be used in the classroom.

Many schools across the country have invested in tablet technology, but are they using them to their full potential? Research indicates that used correctly, tablets are fantastic learning tools and can really inspire students and aid teaching. A potential barrier to tablet technology being fully utilised in schools is the complexity of storing and moving work and sharing finished pieces between students and staff.

For any tablet technology to be successfully used, it needs to be beneficial to learning and student achievement, and must be simple to use both by teachers and students. Any apps need to seamlessly integrate into the learning environment and curriculum so they don’t detract or become an additional “chore” which impinges on everyone’s time. One new app and software tool which fulfils this criteria is TrilbyTV, which is being launched at BETT in January, 2014.

This practical guide is for teachers looking to adopt a flipped learning approach to their classroom.

What is flipped learning?

If you’re still not sure what a flipped classroom looks like, or if you want to confirm what you think you know, take a few minutes to read my guest post for the Senior Leaders site: ‘The Future of Learning’.

Creating your own content

To create my own flipped learning videos, I use the brilliant Explain Everything app for iPad. For £1.99 you really can’t go wrong with this app. The following guide shows how I create my videos using this app.

The iPad camera has so much potential in classrooms, however the camera app itself is limited in its features. With his experience of using video apps with students, Nik Peachey lists the best ones for enabling teachers to add annotations and commentaries to recorded video, and use video for creating journals, storytelling and speaking practice.

One of the great things about mobile devices such as tablets, iPads and phones is that most modern devices have good quality cameras and microphones built in.

This opens up a really wide range of potential for communication and speaking practice that used to be such a struggle to organise on older laptops and desktop computers.

App developers have also been quick to exploit the potential of this powerful tool and in this post I'd like to look at some of the tools that have been created and how they can be used for language development.